We are now at a stage where a twitter mob would see "men should not be allowed to compete in women's sports" as a bigoted statement. To the vast majority of people there are important differences between men and women, and will now have to awkwardly self-censors their speech. Or they will worry whether they are actually bigoted and attempt to signal that they are not really a bad person by relenting to the group.

We are also at a stage where a US Supreme Court nominee under questioning was unwilling to hazard a guess at a definition of Woman. The risks for them personally was just too high.

We're also at a stage where I (not American) get bombarded by this ideological pathology of the American Left when I end up on Twitter. How do I opt out?

You can't. People in San Francisco control big tech, and they've decided the entire internet should reflect their own microcosmic perspective on the world. See the other replies to your comment as an example - they really can't see anything beyond their immediate surroundings.

Why do you think biological men should be allowed to compete in sports against biological women at a professional level? Is that fair to those women?

We can acknowledge and accept trans people without bulldozing millennia of human culture. This has nothing to do with "speech", free or otherwise.

And yet, the commenter I replied to had not mentioned trans-people vs biological men, or anything. They just said men vs women and left it that. See my point?

So how you want the game to work is that you expect me to defend myself against being called bigoted or yield to your ideology. That's how you are propagating your perspective?

It’s not an ideology - acknowledging the nuances of the actual debate (trans vs women sports) is basic courtesy. Deliberately ignoring it multiple times is malicious.

Some would say giving a deliberately simple statement like the parent commentator's the interpretation most offensive to you is evidence of malicious intent.

What are you even talking about? Did you read OP's statement?

> We are now at a stage where a twitter mob would see "men should not be allowed to compete in women's sports" as a bigoted statement.

This is clearly referring to the present day public debate of whether trans-people should be allowed to participate in men/women sporting.

If you think I'm wrong, could you point me to the ongoing non-trans-related debate regarding men vs women sports?

>What are you even talking about? We lack the shared language for me to explain it simply, but I might be able to get there if you're engaging in good faith. Unfortunately your response comes across as evidence that you're not. If you are engaging in good faith and actually want an answer, tell me whether you think men (by your preferred definition) should be allowed to compete in women's (by your preferred definition) sports.

There is no point to free speech unless it protects speech that offends.

> protects speech that offends.

Why are you beating this fake dead horse? Free speech is protected, offensive or not. There are no governmental consequences.

However, it also covers and allows for the replies, tweet storms, public shaming that occur when your free speech is racist, sexist, or bigoted and malicious.

That's what this debate is /actually/ about - you just want protection against backlash.

I call partial bullshit on your comments.

>In the case of Justine Sacco, here's a thought: if you don't want to be shamed "at the scale of global society"... ...don't fuckin' post an unfathomably bigoted comment on a public, global forum.

Who defines "unfathomably bigoted"? You? A small screeching mob of twitter warriors? A small but influential group of editors and writers for papers like the NY Times and others? You're prima facie assuming that a discourse labeled as bigoted is indeed horribly bigoted.. Given the number of VERY CLEAR examples many of us have seen of highly dubious and sometimes completely irrational definitions of supposed offensiveness (feel free to google search them, there are many), then no, things are not just a full-stop case of "you must be bigoted then if a group of people say you are". Aside from issues of free speech, definitions of bigotry, sexism, racism and so forth have in many circles gone completely off the rails of rational, reasoned thought.

>If you find yourself regularly worrying about whether something you say might be perceived as racist or sexist, maybe it's time to spend time recognizing that your bigoted attitudes towards others are wrong, and doing something about it.

I could repeat the point I already made above here. You make the same very shaky assertion that someone's attitudes are bigoted just because they question certain digital assertions about sex, gender or racism. Nope. Hijacking an argument by assuming a premise is simply dishonest.

Your stabbing argument is also absurd. By widespread practical and moral definition, people recognize that randomly stabbing others is wrong and socially damaging. The same definitely doesn't apply to someone wondering if a person who's biologically a man but had gender reassignment should then compete in women's sports. The latter is far less settled, not just philosophically but also biologically.

I’m not sure why you’re so heavily downvoted - this is common sense.

They desire that those having bad opinions should be shamed and are therefore being given what they desired, in a classic demonstration that one should be careful what one wishes for.